This is not the Slashdot we knew. It's been handed down to at least two companies by now. it's prettier now, but the soul disappeared.

All the good vibes of /. now exist on hackernews, but that's starting to go downhill as well. It seems that there's a cycle to the nerd news site: unknown and small -> good community -> community you actually mention to others as newsworthy -> purchased by a large corporation -> Trolls and newbs take notice -> eternal september commences -> site abandoned by quality participants.

I remember looking up "Reproduction" in my school library's Encyclopedia back in fourth grade, and seeing fairly graphic pictures and content. "Sex" was another good one. Eventually, we looked up "Vulva" and "Breasts". 'Twas a good time had by all the kids hovering over the World Book.

I bet you Larry Sanger had a similar experience when he was younger.

Now that I'm a parent, who am I to deny my children the same pleasure of discovery? It seems like this is the one area where everyone is afraid that being informed will somehow make all these children shoot up a school or something. They aren't going to just magically stumble upon "Dutch Pancake (sex act)" or whatever; they're going to be directly searching for the term after one of their friends tells them about it. More than likely, it'll make having "the talk" a lot easier later on if they're already educated; you'll be largely discussing responsibility, rather than technical questions.

In this particular case it isn't terrorism at all regardless of who does it.

Having plans like this public and running these drills hopefully means we never have to find out.

And destroying without a shadow of a doubt North Korea's ability to hit us with another Nuke probably means such overkill with nuclear bombardment of the possible silo locations that almost nobody in North Korea would survive.

I never want to find out just how far we would go in that scenario, but I imagine it's far.

Ok, here's my quote about an idealized capitalist society. Now I didn't say that was my ideal society, I could have been a communist and have written what I wrote. All I did was point out what the two idealized societies are. But anyway, but here's what I wrote:

So in a ideal capitalist society, a person would be encouraged to save everyone a million man-hours because if he made something that useful he'd become rich.

In this world, this man is not compensated for the millions of man hours he saved, but he is able to get rich from his invention by selling what he made because it's so useful (and presumably since it's an invention and not just a skill, rare). Useful + rarity could be considered supply and demand here.

So in a ideal capitalist society, a person would be encouraged to save everyone a million man-hours because if he made something that useful he'd become rich.

In an idealized communist society, it's to each according to need and from each according to ability, so that person would be encouraged to save everyone a million man hours for no reward, but just because he has the ability.

In your idealized society, you think he should be paid based on... how many hours he worked? Your hybrid economic system removes both the altruistic motive of communism and the reward motive of capitalism.

So you've invented the worst economic system possible. Congrats!

This is a fantastic comment, but it leaves something important out. I've also been very impressed with BPs actions after the accident, they've been trying everything anyone can think of and aren't skimping. Before the accident, it's another story.

They acted absolutely appallingly which allowed this to happen in the first place. Always putting speed above safety and a culture of shifting blame is the real cause of this. Watching the 60 minutes episode on this, it's absolutely disgusting how they acted. I hope they're hurt badly enough that they never recover.

In the book "Before the Dawn" it says that the idea that we reproduced with neanderthals is effectively ruled out due to genetic distance. Neanderthals were encountered by modern humans in Europe, and so Europeans should have more genetic distance from other peoples if we had bred with them.

It's funny because free markets encourage monopolistic behavior, and any kind of antitrust activity is regulation of the otherwise free market.

Only if you think that mothers and fathers are the same and interchangeable.

I think most of us think they're not, and there's biology to support that (hormones, pheremones, breast feeding, etc). Of the people I know who think mothers and fathers are interchangable, none of them have raised kids.

Right - a independent, successful woman who has plenty of options decides - makes the conscious choice - to stay home and raise her kids, and that's still an issue of sexism?

Stop telling people what to think. Women, and everyone else, have the right to self determination. Oh but she made a choice you don't approve of, so clearly we can't take her decision seriously as being her decision, after all, she made the wrong one. Did I get that right?

If someone wants to stay home and raise their kids, you have no business telling them what to do. Why don't you look at it as sacrificing her career in order to make sure her kids are raised well? Can't you respect her decision enough to not view her as a victim but look at her as someone who did something noble? And it was noble, so have a little respect.

Valuable in the sense I'm using it means the amount of compensation you can get for it. I don't mean moral value, or value to society, or any other meaning of value, just the amount you get paid. The amount you get paid is dictated entirely by how much you're worth to an employer (demand) and how easy that position is to fill (supply), which has no moral judgments in it.

I'm not saying people shouldn't do selfless things, or accept lower paying jobs that help people.

Also, jobs that have a high social benefit, their salaries are also regulated by the same forces and are not always low. Doctors get paid a lot because it takes a smart person ten years to become a doctor, and they are very much needed and provide a great benefit to society. An engineer who can design a new hybrid car is the same.

There are no moral judgments involved, you're simply selling your services on an open market.

Exactly. In your example supply for the (level of) service you provide would be extremely low.